Thursday 1 November 2007

Pic of the day: Weird things happen when men and women are together, but I'm trying to describe it in more than 50 000 words, not less than 400 as Chiaki requires. (From the slice-of-life anime Minami-ke.)

NANOWRIIIIMO!

As the reader will have noticed, my novel ate me. I am now a month and a half late, but it was all worth it. Or will be worth it, as seen from November 1. Time is strange enough as it is and this doesn't really help. Luckily I have notes and a decent memory.

As regular readers will have noticed, I once again participate in the National Novel Writing Month, which incidentally is now very international. Although many of us people from other countries write in English, partly because we would not have heard of NaNoWriMo unless we read English habitually, and partly to share the novels with each other.

I am breaking from my dubious tradition of trying to write romance novels. Although it is true that you don't need to have met aliens to write science fiction, my utter lack of resonance with the human concept of romance makes it a bad choice for me. The main bonus of the genre is that the standards of quality are very low. There is a lot of badly written romance, and supernatural romance in particular seems to be a niche where you can get read even though you are an obvious hack writer.

Making a soft exit to Fantasy, which is easier to writer but harder to sell, I still have two young people in their late teens, a boy and a girl, travel alone together for much of the book. The difference being that they are not fated to fall in love. The story is entirely seen from the boy's perspective (not 1st person, though, but the narrator is unable to read anyone else's thoughts, so it is more like the boy is writing about himself in 3d person.) Weird things do indeed happen, but they don't result in kissing.

Apart from the theme of sexual temptations and miraculous divine powers, the novel is not at all autobiographical. It is also not going to be completed, but I'll be satisfied when I write the 50 000 words. Real novels are for pros. Or people who don't have other ways to become famous. I have the Chaos Node, after all.